


The Masks I Wear for You

by Ranni



Series: All the Ways [2]
Category: Avengers, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Clint makes dubious claims about mermen, Domestic Avengers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Getting Together, Hiding, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Protective Tony Stark, Self Harm, Team as Family, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Has A Heart, shared secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 08:15:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11802060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranni/pseuds/Ranni
Summary: It takes getting shot, falling off three buildings, getting hit by a car, and some minor electrocution before Clint understands what Natasha, Phil, and Tony have been trying to tell him all along.(All stories in this series can be read independently)





	The Masks I Wear for You

  
*******  
He's terrified, only six and clinging to Barney, who is older and always angry. But his sense of self preservation has been finely honed on the whetstone of their father's drunken anger, and he immediately knows who Foster Mom #1 wants him to be.

So while Barney is the sullen pre-teen, Clint gets to be her sweet, blameless baby. He hates the way she paws at him, smelling of cigarettes and cheap perfume, patting his hair with fingers made long with pressed on nails. He hates it but pretends otherwise, because he wants to stay, wants this to work out.

"You're so perfect," she says, and later, "I would keep you, except for that brother of yours."

Foster Dad #2 wants a son to throw a baseball back and forth with when he gets home from work, role playing whatever idyllic image the man had in mind when he and his wife signed up to be foster parents. Clint is happy to play that part. His manners are impeccable and he gives Mom #2 nothing but sunny smiles. Barney gets them kicked out of that house, too. Mom and Dad #2 cry as Clint waves goodbye from the back of the social worker's car.

There is no immediate placement after that, and they go to a large group home with dozens of boys. Many are older and all are hard to place. There is endless scrapping and posturing, everyone jockeying for position in a hierarchy of boys that fight for every resource and bit of self respect they can get. And Clint, eight years old, changes again, this time to someone who swears liberally and insults brutally, using words as a weapon to back up the fury that his body is still too little to pay out on.

Mom #3 wears high collars and long sleeves and has a sad, sweet smile. She buys Barney and Clint new clothes that are finer than anything they have ever worn. Clint wears long sleeves, too, when Dad #3 starts leaving bruises up and down his arms.

Foster Parents #4 are religious and so is Clint. He gets baptized and goes to Sunday school and talks passionately about Jesus while Barney scowls and rolls his eyes. Their foster brother warns them darkly not to get too comfortable, and Clint discovers why a few weeks later when Dad #4 starts drinking again.

He and Barney join Carson's Traveling Circus and Clint falls in with Trickshot and the Swordsman soon after. It's easy to figure out what they want. They want perfection and charisma in the ring, for the show, and enjoy a rough, smartass veneer for every other moment of the day. Twelve year old Clint learns to smile impishly, to win crowds over with showy shots and a dazzling affect. Everything about him promises fun, excitement, until after the show, when those promises turn to dark looks and snarls, possessive of his money and bodily autonomy, only allowed to keep either when he fights.

Barney wants Clint to be his mirror, to want all the things Barney wants. The day Clint stops being that mirror is the same day that Barney leaves.

*******

SHIELD wants him to be an assassin.

It's the best place he's lived, by far, and the people there are smart, decent. They respect him, or at least respect what he can do.

Clint looks at the man through his scope. All his training has built to this moment. He has to decide if he can exchange the horror of taking someone's life for the comfort and safety of SHIELD. This person they want him to shoot is terrible, so maybe it's okay. But if Clint does this then a killer is who he'll really be underneath all the other masks.

He wants to stay to stay with SHIELD, wants this to work out, and he'll be whoever he needs to be to make that happen. He can shoot, he can fight. He can see and do terrible things and push it all away later; he's been doing that his whole life.

He pulls the trigger.

Being Hawkeye keeps him alive and fed for so long that Clint almost forgets that he started as just another mask. It feels like it might be who he really is now.

*******

Nick Fury likes ruthless efficiency and unswerving loyalty. He even likes mouthiness to a certain point, and then absolutely none thereafter--Clint learns that line early and skates it effortlessly his entire career.

His first handler, Jim Campion, is not hard to read. Jim admires competence, but he likes that cheekiness as well, that bit of danger, of defiance. Maybe because he doesn't have much of those in his own personality, which is dull as dishwater. But Clint can be all of those things that Jim wants. He flirts meaningfully, with arched eyebrows and well timed double entendres, keeping Campion hanging in a limbo of frustration and fascination.

His fellow SHIELD agents are also easy to understand. All of his frightening focus is reserved for the field and in training areas, otherwise he is the king of the good time, drinking a lot off duty, telling dirty stories and bawdy jokes. Clint knows everyone's names, from the top agents to custodial staff, and everyone is glad to have him around. He can sit in the cafeteria next to anyone and be welcome; he imagines this is what it must feel like to be the football captain in high school. It's a heady feeling, to be so loved, but it's also exhausting to perform every waking hour.

Jim Campion screws everything up by having a heart attack and dying in his office, facedown on his desk, hand loosely gripping the pen that signed his last form--a request for new boots.

A week later Clint laces up those new boots and goes to meet his next handler, Phil Coulson. Clint knows him, of course--Clint knows everyone--and isn't particularly thrilled. Coulson is a hard read and a sour, humorless man, one of the few completely immune to Clint's charms.

He isn't worried, though. It may take a week or two, but he'll figure Coulson out, figure out who he wants Clint to be.

*******

Getting shot hurts a lot more than he'd imagined it would.

In movies people aways shrug off gunshots, tie a thin bandage around a tiny wound. Clint doesn't get hit and declare it 'only a scratch' before jumping back into the fray. Instead Clint gets shot and goes down like a sack of potatoes, choking on the blood that pools rapidly in his lung. He lays there with his bow clenched in one twitching hand and feels nothing but agony and a rather dumbfounded surprise that his life is ending this quickly, when it seemed like things were going pretty well.

His vision is turning gray as the op leader, whose name he can't remember, looms over him and pushes down hard against the wound while talking steadily into his comm. Or maybe he's talking to Clint, maybe he's saying something reassuring. It doesn't really matter. His last coherent thought before the gray turns into soundless black is a bitter regret that he's dying among a group of strangers, even though he's known them for years.

But he doesn't die, instead wakes up shuddering in a hospital room. The op leader--it's Phil Coulson, he remembers that now--holds his hand while they wait for the good drugs to kick in.

Coulson doesn't leave the hospital until Clint does.

Clint still can't figure out what he wants.

*******

He returns from Russia with the Black Widow at his side instead of in a body bag. They both go straight to Medical, bleeding and wounded from their protracted fight.

Phil doesn't say anything, just sits beside him again, looking like he hasn't slept in a week.

"I thought I'd try to save someone for a change," Clint tells him, his voice wrecked and raspy. He shifts uncomfortably on the bed, broken ribs throbbing in time with his heartbeat. "I thought maybe things would be different if I could save...just _one_ of them."

Phil sighs. "I've been thinking the same thing for awhile now."

*******

He's holed up in a shitty motel with Natasha; SHIELD has been bafflingly cheap on this op. There's an old window unit air conditioner with all the plastic knobs twisted off, and when Clint goes to adjust the temperature he gets shocked so hard that he actually loses consciousness for a few seconds. He wakes up to the sound of his own helplessly chattering teeth and Natasha's giggling. It's the first time he ever hears her laugh.

She's amazing and terrible, and, like Phil Coulson, someone _real_ , someone completely and unapologetically themselves.

They want Clint to be himself, too. It's the first time anyone has ever wanted that.

*******

Loki takes everything Clint is and tears it apart, and a lifetime of wearing masks comes in handy when he is reduced to being a mere avatar for a demi-god. When Clint comes back to himself Phil is dead and Natasha is all he has left.

Clint watches Agent Samuels draw back a meaty fist and remembers sitting next to him in the SHIELD cafeteria sometimes, commiserating over runny mashed potatoes. The fist connects with his mouth, splitting his lip against his teeth. The other SHIELD agents only see betrayal when they look at him now. He remembers hundreds of shared meals, of shared ops, of shared work and goals, but they've forgotten those things, half a lifetime of hard work undone in three days.

He doesn't bother resisting as they beat him into unconsciousness. He can't be Hawkeye anymore, and Clint Barton only half exists without Phil Coulson to complete the rest of him. With his two favorite personas torn away all that is left is the killer that lurks beneath, and that person doesn't really deserve to live.

The agents find him again a few days later. They are careful not to break any bones. Fury watches the doctor check Clint over afterwards, his face stoic as Natasha seethes. Fury doesn't ask who did it. Clint wonders if he already knows and doesn't blame them.

The third time he's cornered the resulting concussion is so bad that he's puking in Medical for hours and Natasha tells him they're moving into the Tower with Stark and the other Avengers. He's so tired and hollowed out that he doesn't argue.

*******

He shares an apartment with Natasha, who is as constant as ever. She frowns at him when he sleeps too much or eats too little, but otherwise gives him space. He never has to pretend around her, even if he maybe _should_ , a little bit. He knows he's worrying her but doesn't really care.

Steve wants discipline, confidence, decisive perfection in the field. He wants the dutiful SHIELD agent that Clint had grown into, and that's a comfortable enough role to assume when they are called out.

Bruce needs calm and a listening ear. Someone to bounce ideas off of, someone with a ready smile and a good joke, someone that doesn't make things harder than they need to be. Clint polishes off his best nice guy act and plays it to perfection.

Thor, when he's around, likes a hale and hearty comrade in arms, all boastful and embracing extremes--big meals, loud laughs, tall tales. Keeping up with Thor is like hanging out with the entire circus while crammed in an elevator.

Tony is a bit of a surprise. Clint had come into this thing borrowing others' opinions of the man, never having met him before the Battle of New York. The more Clint hangs out with him, however, the more Tony reminds him of the best of both Phil and Natasha, somehow combined in one person. Tony is brash and brilliant and confident and plainspoken. He's _real_ , in that way that Clint can't be anymore.

*******

Tony also seems to run on some sort of personal timetable that no one else is ever privy to or understands. He swings between maddeningly unobservant or disturbingly perceptive, and is never the one people want him to be at the time they wish him to be.

Clint gets his first taste of this after a team dinner, which is starting to be a regular thing now. Clint jokes around with Bruce and tells a highly embellished story of fighting an aquatic creature alongside Coulson--which may or may not have been a merman--as the others laugh, even Natasha, who was there and really knows better. At first Tony is obviously enjoying the story and making lewd comments, then starts to frown as it goes on and on. After dinner party breaks up, everyone drifting back to their own pursuits, Tony gets himself a drink from the fridge and raises his eyebrows at Clint in silent question.

"Sure." He catches the bottle tossed to him and takes a long drink without checking the label; all beer basically tastes the same to him.

"Well, yeah, of _course_ you want one. After all, you're our Good Time Guy, aren't you?" Tony has his intense face on, the frowning, narrow eyed one he wears when he's sorting through some particularly frustrating problem.

Clint's smile suddenly feels a little frozen. "Huh?"

"Those stories, the way you've got a quick answer for everything--you're the very definition of 'hail fellow well met'. Always _on_ , like the goddamned Edison lightbulb. Even when you're supposedly relaxing you're performing."

Clint puts his drink down. It tastes sour and unpleasant, as if the words have seeped in and spoiled it. "You're one to talk, Stark," he says easily, like it's a joke. "You're the biggest showboat I've ever seen, and I was in the freaking _circus_."

Tony tips his head in acknowledgement and agreement, not self conscious in the least. "You're different around each one of us. Then when we're all together in a group you spin around like a top, trying to be five different people all at once. It's wearing me the fuck out just _watching_ it."

"Maybe keep your eyes and opinions to yourself then," Clint snaps back quickly, not liking where this conversation is headed.

Tony holds up his hand placatingly. "What I'm trying to say is that you don't have to bother playing those games with me. If I want to be humored I'll go talk to any of the number of sycophants that love to hang all over me. But the last thing I need is a fake friend in my own goddamned home." He scowls and nods at the bottle in Clint's hands. "You didn't even want that, did you?"

Now he _really_ doesn't like where this is going. "It's fine."

"I see you drink all the time, and I don't think you even like to. Why bother? What _do_ you like? Tell me something real, something honest. Tell me your favorite drink. Come on, you can give me that much, can't you?"

Clint lifts the beer and drains it one long gulp, then hurls it into the recycling bin across the room. Tony raises his eyebrows in polite appreciation, waiting. "My favorite drink? _That_ , I'm afraid," Clint says finally, wiping his grinning mouth with the back of his hand, "is highly classified information."

He winks at Tony, who doesn't smile back. Maybe he just doesn't get the joke.

That's okay; it wasn't especially funny.

*******

The first time Clint gets hurt with the Avengers is when he falls off a building.

*******

The second time he gets hurt is when he falls off another building.

*******

The third time he falls off a building they're pretty pissed.

Natasha finds him on the range, where he's meditating by way of bow and arrow. Nothing makes him happy quite like shooting does. It's uncomplicated and undemanding--a tangible object with a knowable lifespan, heading in a straight line toward a tangible end. The arrows always go the way he wants them to, and always have, all his life.

"I thought you were beyond this kind of thing," Natasha says bluntly. "I thought you were done falling."

He rolls his shoulders, the muscles aching pleasantly. "You say that like it's intentional. Like I _mean_ to."

"Tell me that you don't," she says seriously. "Clint, tell me that and make me believe it." He snorts dismissively and shoots another arrow as she watches his face. "Bruce thinks you are passively suicidal."

"Bruce is a passively presumptuous asshole." He strips off his shooting gloves angrily; he'd come down here to get centered, to relax, and she's ruined that.

"Is this because of Loki? Or...Phil?" She grits out his name like it pains her, and it probably does. Even months later his absence is a wedge of silence between them, nothing able to fill the space he left behind.

"Don't worry so much," Clint offers, ignoring that question and focusing on Natasha's irritation, which feels safer. "Jesus, if I wanted to die I wouldn't go about it so obliquely."

"Then what is this? I saw you on that building, Clint." He starts to protest and she holds up a silencing hand. "I _saw_ you. Is this some sort of test? To see if you can trust us, if we have your back? Because one day we'll fail, no matter how hard we try, and you'll be dead. Let us prove ourselves another way. But no more accidents." She puts a hand on his arm. "I can't lose the both of you."

*******

This time, instead of falling, Clint is hit by a car.

In fairness, it's not _his_ fault that he's hit by a car--neither he or the car is on a road at the time. The car is one of several on a flatbed that becomes airborne when something explodes next to it. The car flies through the air and just sort of...hits him. Unlike people getting shot, he's never seen this happen to someone in a movie, so he really doesn't have much to compare the experience to.

It hurts a lot, as it turns out. Voices yell over the comm in his ear and a moment later the car is ripped away, a long gush of Clint's blood arcing up after it.

"Oh, God," Steve says, pressing down hard. Tony is there, too, his armor peeling back to reveal a worried face underneath.

It's all so familiar, so like when he'd gotten shot before--bleeding out while among well known strangers--that it hurts more than the actual wounds. Ten years later and half a world away and his life has barely changed, hasn't progressed, hasn't moved forward at all. Phil Coulson's hard work had been for nothing--he'd be so disappointed if he could see Clint now, dying in exactly the same way, all over again.

There's only one person that does know him, the one person he's allowed, and his ears strain for Natasha's voice as he tries to look around and find her.

"No, no, don't do that. Hold your neck still," Tony says, laying a hand on Clint's forehead, trying to keep him in place. His face is sweaty and strained and looks scared. "We've got you, you're gonna be okay."

"Milk," Clint struggles out finally. The world is too bright, the sun directly behind Tony's head. Clint closes his eyes against the glare and can't reopen them. His own voice sounds a hundred miles away.

"What?" Tony says, leaning closer. "Oh. _Oh_."

The Bartons never had enough money for milk. Beer, yes. Vodka, certainly. But never milk. Foster families usually went for the cheapest options, and the circus certainly never had anything like that, everyone subsisting on alcohol and powdered mix drinks. Clint had a mini fridge in his SHIELD quarters but could never keep much in it; food always spoiled when he was on missions, and he never knew when those would be. Milk was a luxury item, something you could only buy by the gallon in a place you where knew you would also be tomorrow.

He can't say all that right now, but Tony's smart and can probably guess a lot of it anyway.

Tony uses his free hand to hold Clint's fingers. Not his hand, because everything is bleeding and broken, just his fingers in a loose, gentle grip.

It's the first time anyone has done that since Phil died.

*******

He's the one recovering, but Natasha commandeers the television with unpitying single mindedness, and he groans when she queues up their ten millionth viewing of 'The Sound of Music'. Whenever those derpy kids start singing Clint holds the irrational hope that this time they'll all drown when their canoe capsizes. Natasha throws a quilt over him in a halfhearted attempt at caretaking, then props her feet up on his legs to keep him in place during her cinematic torture session.

"The other day Stark said that I don't know who I am," Clint tells her suddenly, interrupting the worst of the warbling.

"What a strange thing to say."

He's not sure if she's talking about Stark's statement or his own, then decides it doesn't matter; both _are_ strange. Natasha looks at him consideringly, then pauses the movie. "He was probably just flirting with you."

"I highly doubt that."

She shakes her head in long suffering frustration, then sighs. "You've been floundering for awhile, I guess."

"Hmmph," he snorts, eyes cutting away from her to the stilled movie in front of them. "You're supposed to be on _my_ side."

"I'm always on your side," she says seriously, and touches his cheek with her fingertips until he looks back at her. " _I_ know who you are. You're restless, born with more energy than your body can handle, but you can force yourself to be still. You see so much but then make yourself willfully blind. You have a capacity for violence but try to be a good person. You're the man who didn't kill me when he had the chance, when anyone else would have." She shrugs a little awkwardly, and gestures roughly, as if pushing the words onto him. "You're _Clint_. My best friend."

"Well, gee, I don't sound half bad the way _you_ say it." He nudges her with a grin that fades quickly. "It's easier to give people what they want. People are nicer to be around when they think they like you." She doesn't say anything, just leans into him, rests her chin on his shoulder, the way Phil used to. "What if I told you that the person I actually am hates watching this goddamned movie? I truly believe you are using it to punish me for injuries that were beyond my control."

Natasha sits up, shoving away from him with a fisted hand, in a sort of reverse punch. "When I'm punishing you there will be no question of it. And I don't want to hear how much you hate this--you know I can see the little hearts in your eyes whenever Captain Von Trapp sings."

"God, you really _do_ know me."

*******

"Come on, you're all better." Tony waves his hand at Clint's bandages dismissively. "It's been, what? Four days? Those are basically just fashion choices at this point in your recovery."

"There are still staples in my skin," Clint points out, but he's already struggling to get up from the couch, a little awkward and unbalanced due to various pains. He finally makes it to his feet and tries to cover the slight sway in his stance by stretching exaggeratedly.

"Let's go out to dinner," Tony suggests. "Or to a movie or something."

"I'm supposed to be on bedrest," Clint says regretfully, "and while I could not give two shits about what I'm 'supposed' to be doing, Natasha will finish the job that car started if I actually left the Tower." Tony makes a motion to help him sit back down, but Clint stops him with a tentative hand. "But we don't have to leave. We could do something here."

"Ohhhh? What kind of in-house activity did you have in mind?" Tony waggles his eyebrows suggestively, but the action is undermined by the concern in his eyes, which take a quick inventory of Clint's bandages, his casted arm.

"How about a tour?"

"You want me to give you a tour of the Tower?"

"No." Clint smiles uncomfortably, a little unsure of this idea all of a sudden. "I'll give _you_ a tour. We just have to sneak out of here before Natasha realizes I'm off the couch."

For the next few hours Clint takes him to all the secret nooks and crannies of Avengers Tower that Tony, though he'd designed the place himself, hadn't known existed. A place between two walls on the roof that blocked most of the other buildings from one's sightline, the perfect place to watch a sunset. A large closet on one of the lower floors, out of the way and behind of a series of unused offices, with a mattress on the floor surrounded by melted candles--the abandoned location of some Stark Industries employee's workplace tryst. A hallway that seems to lead nowhere, a lonely ficus tree at the end by a window, only still alive because Clint waters it faithfully.

"If I could get into the vents right now, I'd _really_ show you some interesting stuff." He's actually a little glad he can't; he's reached the end of his endurance and is flagging noticeably.

"You take urban exploring to the next level, Tweetie," Tony observes, and carefully winds his arm through Clint's good one, subtly supporting him as they head back to the elevator. "You find these crazy, secluded areas and crawl right in, hide in all the places that the people around you have forgotten about."

"That's...a way to put it, I guess."

"Just take us with you sometimes, huh? Like you did today." As they near Clint's apartment, Natasha stands forbiddingly in the doorway, scowling at them both, and Tony wrinkles his nose at her. "Now, before she starts scolding, shall we make plans for our second date?"

*******

**Epilogue**

Clint had gotten back from a mission only an hour earlier and made his way home at breakneck speed. One might have thought he'd forgotten the New Year's Eve party entirely and had stumbled into it by accident, except for the fact that he's brought a mask. It's a gaudy purple and pointed up at the eyes, a stark contrast to the grey t-shirt and black cargo pants he's still wearing. He hadn't wanted to spend time showering and getting his tux on; he's about to miss the big countdown as it is.

It's a room of people in masks, all dancing, spinning in lazy, graceful circles. Murmurs of conversation and quiet laughter, as if being too loud will break the spell. The illusion that they are all beautiful strangers instead of coworkers, as if they danced in an 18th century French ballroom instead of the biggest conference room of Stark Tower, decorated for this event.

Clint Barton walks among them, belonging completely and belonging not at all. SHIELD employees mingle freely with Stark Industries employees, with Avengers. Clint, as always, knows them all, Knows them as the competent--and in some cases, incompetent--people that they really are, and yet does not know them this way, dressed in finery, elaborate masks, costume jewelry.

There's Jasper Sitwell, more than a little drunk and obviously telling a story, trying and failing not to gesticulate too wildly. Nick Fury is dancing with someone that might be Maria Hill; he's spinning her around too fast for Clint to see. There's Bruce Banner swaying with Lena Alamood from SHIELD accounting, who has a drinking bird on the top of her desk and a gun taped underneath. Clint doesn't see Natasha, but knows she's here, somewhere. He grabs a drink from a passing waiter's tray and looks around, chugging it nervously.

And there. _There_ he is. Tony fits in with the party as perfectly as Clint does not.

"Hey there, Iron Man." Tony is flushed from drinking and dancing and good humor, the high color in his cheeks making him as beautiful as Natasha. To Clint, anyway.

"I see you dressed down for the occasion," he observes dryly and Clint shrugs. "Is this yet another bold fashion statement, or did you come straight in from your mission?"

"Just got back," Clint confirms, and Tony frowns. He hadn't known where Barton was sent, and hates not being in the loop, especially with his own team. When Tony raises his eyebrows meaningfully Clint adds "From Montana."

Tony laughs suddenly, surprising Clint, who laughs along with him. "What business could SHIELD possibly have in _Montana_?"

"That, I'm afraid, actually _is_ classified."

"Did you buy that monstrosity in the Big Sky Country?"

Clint touches the tips of his fingers to the mask. "Nah, I bought it at a dollar store on my way here." He grins crookedly. "I mean, it was purple and only a dollar...sometimes the universe just smiles and says ' _YES_!'"

Tony smirks and shakes his head. "Well, it's very _you_."

The thing is garish and cheap--and Clint's smile slips a few degrees before he shrugs the declaration off. Tony is often thoughtless, but rarely means to be cruel. "As is yours. Very stylish. You look like the Lone Ranger."

Tony had gone for a basic black mask, forgoing the frills that some other people had put into theirs. He pushes it up onto his forehead, where it sits crookedly against his tousled hair. "Yeah, I'm pretending to be someone else for awhile. Someone that comes to a party dressed like this and doesn't feel like a fool."

Clint smiles again. "That's why I came dressed as myself. I don't mind being a fool, as long as I _choose_ to be."

Tony starts to say something back, then is distracted by movement all around them, loud chanting. It's the countdown to midnight, here already. Almost the end of the party. The end of the magic, too brief, as all magic ever is.

"Ten, nine, eight, seven--!"

Tony watches the clock high on the wall and he's counting aloud with the rest of them, everyone's faces excited and more hopeful than usual. Clint wishes he could freeze the moment, so everyone could like this forever. His breath catches with surprise as Tony's fingers suddenly close around his.

"Six, five, four,--" Tony's eyes move from the clock toward Clint, his grin widening when he sees Clint looking back.

"Three, two, ONE! Happy New Year!" A cheer erupts, and there is loud, happy laughter as silver confetti falls down around them, everyone hugging and cheering and celebrating.

Clint doesn't know quite what comes over him--maybe it's just the excitement of moment, or he's emboldened by the alcohol, drunk on Tony's bright eyes and their clasped hands, or maybe it's because it's a new year again, full of possibilities and hope in a way no other day quite is. But whatever the reason, he impulsively tugs Tony closer, then reaches up and pulls the black mask back down over Tony's face, covering everything but those beautiful eyes and his mouth, which Clint kisses, passionate from months of longing.

And he'd like to tell himself it's the beginning of a pretty great kiss, but his heart shatters a bit when Tony abruptly leans away. His hand reaches behind Clint's head and fumbles at the tie there, pulls the mask away from his face.

"There. _There_ you are," Tony murmurs happily, and kisses him back.


End file.
